Tag: Veterans Issues

I have worked with Vets from most of the service branches as a therapist in the last four years with much of my contact involved crisis interventions where there were some total melt-downs. The last incident involved a SWAT team deployment. Sometimes, folks tend to over-react when Vets have these melt-downs. Why? Well, not everyone is trained as a military sniper or Special Forces combatant, and that gets some special attention.

Personally, I grew up in a military family and spent a lot of time on Army, Navy and Airforce installations back then.

I experienced first hand the issues that occured when active duty military servicemen return to civilian life as Veterans and have serious re-integration issues.

Because of this professional and personal history of mine, working with Veterans experiencing personal issues is a passion of mine.

That said, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that PTSD is not exclusively a problem that is exclusively found in the Veteran communities. As you migh imagine, PTSD can occur from any numer of life events. The letter “P” stands for POST, the letter “T” stands for TRAUMATIC, the letter “S” stands for STRESS, and the letter “D” stands for DISORDER. You don’t see a V for Veteran because the disorder happens in many situations. Wartime or even deployment is just one paticular situation that Veterans are exposed to.

When military discharge of a person who has a known or even unknown PTSD diagnosis occurs, this greatly complicates the stresses of re-adjustment and re-integration back into civilian live. As you can see, for some Veterans, the reintegration itself can present a lot of adjustment issues. These same issues may serve as “triggers” for either a diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD condition.